Profitable Punishment – Tempe Style

Matt Brown is a little peeved at Tempe, Arizona’s crackdown on college drinking:

The gist of the article is that people visiting Tempe last weekend were going to see a massive police presence as officers from nine agencies teamed up for the “Safe and Sober” campaign, something that as near as I can tell is intended to violate the constitutional rights of hundreds of innocent people in a valiant effort to make college suck.

As far as he can tell, it doesn’t seem to make sense:

Tempe is a great place to live and work, but looking at the numbers, the “Safe and Sober” campaign certainly doesn’t make me feel any safer. It doesn’t make being sober like the totalitarian hypocrites who made it happen want seem all that appealing either. Thinking about all those cops ignoring real crimes to harass a few college kids is depressing.

Well, I don’t know for sure why police departments do things like that. I suppose it could just be a way to make it look like they’re Doing Something About The Problem. However, many years of watching the War on Drugs have taught me a few things about police priorities, and after reading Matt’s blog post, I had some strong suspicions about what was going on.

You may be surprised to hear there is a revenue angle:

[Tempe Police Chief Tom Ryff] said he is working on plans on how to sustain the task force by asking the Tempe City Council to authorize overtime for officers and asking the Governor’s Office of Highway Safety, which helped fund the Safe and Sober campaign, for additional federal grants.

I think that pretty much explains what’s going on, and why so many law enforcement organizations decided to make life suck for ASU students: The Governor’s Office of Highway Safety pays them to do it. What police commander is going to turn down more money for his department? At the very least, it will free up some of their budget commitment, maybe to buy some cool new SWAT gear, and if they play their cards right, they might even fund some overtime.

There’s a little more to it than that, however. The Arizona Governor’s Office of Highway Safety website has a Grant Opportunities page which mentions “DUI Abatement” grants. The Arizona Criminal Justice Commission offers this explanation:

Overview – The Oversight Council on Driving or Operating Under the Influence Abatement grant program provides grant funds for two types of programs as authorized by ARS §28-1303:

• for enforcement purposes, prosecutorial and judicial activities, and/or alcohol abuse treatment services related to preventing and abating driving or operating under the influence occurrences in a motor vehicle or a motorized watercraft as defined in ARS §5-301; and,
• for innovative programs that use emerging technologies to educate, prevent, or deter occurrences of driving or operating under the influence in a motor vehicle or a motorized watercraft as established by ARS §28-1304.

The goal of this program is to fund Arizona programs and services in order to reduce occurrences of driving under the influence.

The funding methodology is described a little further down:

Funding – Funding availability is dependent on the additional assessment assessed and collected per A.R.S §§ 28-1382 and 1383.

Enforcement Program: Seventy percent (70%) of the monies in the abatement fund will be awarded to political subdivisions and tribal governments for enforcement purposes, prosecutorial and judicial activities and/or alcohol abuse treatment services related to preventing and abating driving or operating under the influence occurrences in a motor vehicle pursuant to ARS §§28-1381 and 1382 or a motorized watercraft as defined in ARS §5-301.

So I look up ARS 28-1382 and 1383 and guess what? Those are the DUI laws.

I’m not sure I’m reading this right (and my tolerance for reading statutory English is about used up) but it looks like 28-1382 is the “extreme DUI” law, and it specifies a $250 fine ($500 for a second offense) paid to the abatement fund, with ARS 28-1383 adding another $250 for aggravated offenses. Looking at the funding section, I think there’s a similar fee structure for drunk boating (extreme and aggravated). In addition,  the fund gets a flat 5% of all restaurant liquor licenses.

I’ve written about the evils of profitable punishment and the distortion it creates for law enforcement before, and this sounds like more of the same. Not only are the police commanders getting money to harass college students, but the harassment pays for itself. Over the first two weekends, Operation Safe and Sober made 66 arrests for extreme DUI and 22 arrests for aggravated DUI. If I’m doing the math right, that’s $22,000 that will flow right back into the DUI abatement fund, to be used to cover the costs of more enforcement. And if you don’t think the law enforcement agencies that put the most money into the fund are going to get the most out of it, you don’t know how government works.

I doubt that $22,000 defrays the entire cost of the Safe-and-Sober operation — even with the restaurant licensing money thrown in — but if you’ve got the cops on the payroll anyway, it’s more money than they’d bring in doing their usual jobs like, you know, patrolling the neighborhoods or responding to 911 calls.